Spoiler-free film reviews from film studies graduate Joe Richards

Frozen: Review

Disney’s latest release, Frozen, is supposedly based on Hans Christian Anderson’s The Snow Queen although in actual fact it shares little in common with the novel.

It takes place in the kingdom of Arendelle where a new queen, Eva is about to be crowned. Nobody, including her sister, Princess Anna, is aware that she was born with the power to create ice and snow and when she is forced to leave the kingdom, in doing so plunging it into an eternal winter, Anna, a snowman named Olaf and a man of the mountain called Kristoff, set out to bring back the Queen and restore summer to Arendelle.

I came out of Frozen content and on a whole satisfied with what I had just seen. I like a good Disney film, especially around Christmas and just like Tangled before it as far as I’m concerned is an excellent addition to the Disney canon.

It’s by no means perfect and I do have a few issues with it. I think the films narrative struggles in places, particularly the beginning and sometimes the story doesn’t flow as well as perhaps it could have.

There’s a lot going on throughout which doesn’t really need to be there, as well as some of the secondary characters who could have easily been cut out for a more tight story.

The songs, and there are a lot of them, are okay but easily forgettable and nowhere near the excellence of Be Our Guest and other classic songs from Disney’s heyday.

The animation is a bit samey too, to the point where it looks like Disney have literally recycled characters from other films but made subtle differences such as a different shade of hair to try and convince us they are different. That being said, the use of 3-D really works here and is worth paying the extra for.

That’s about all the gripes I have though and is me being very picky. Truthfully Frozen could have been a lot worse and at the beginning of the film I thought it was going to be.

It sets up Princess Anna as the classic Disney Princess of old who just wants to be loved and marry a Prince but by the films end, despite not breaking away completely from the Princess stereotype completely, I was satisfied by the changes she had gone through.

The other characters are all pretty lovable too, especially Olaf the snowman who isn’t half as annoying as i thought he was going to be. Children are going to love him and Kristoff’s reindeer Sven.

Frozen, despite being neither original or groundbreaking is an overall decent Disney film and certainly one of the best films they have done over the last decade.

An elderly couple who followed me out described it as gentle and that’s exactly what it is, a comforting, familiar and entertaining film which the whole family can enjoy.